


Bitter Drink

by smallbrownfrog



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Bring Back the Bastard Fest, Canon Compliant, Character Study, Community: deeply_horrible, Gen, Meta, Meta Poetry, Poetry, Sestina, Snape-centric, Structured Form
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-10
Updated: 2013-06-10
Packaged: 2017-12-14 14:01:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 293
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/837692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smallbrownfrog/pseuds/smallbrownfrog
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Deep in Gringotts there is a bottle ...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bitter Drink

**Author's Note:**

> This began with a wonderful prompt by kerravonsen: "Severus Snape, dark and bitter, like black coffee without sugar, or dark unsweetened chocolate." It is a kind of poem called a sestina. Sestinas use a set pattern of six words as line endings. The pattern is: 123456, 615243, 364125, 532614, 451362, 246531, 12/34/56.
> 
> (If you need definitions of any of the British words, see the end notes.)

**Bitter Drink**

Imagine: deep in Gringotts there is a bottle.  
The label is half off that delicate glass throat.  
It’s torn and warped with stains like blotted coffee.  
Yet the letters are still sharp and dark  
where an angular hand has marked,  
“Purest Essence of Severus Snape.”

Yes. That Severus. That Snape.  
Pure may be the wrong word for this bottle.  
To drink it is to be marked  
so deep inside that your throat  
clenches and your eyes turn a dark  
on the far side of bitter coffee.

No, don’t pretend you can sweeten this coffee,  
bowdlerize this story, rescue this Snape.  
Don’t pretend you can’t feel the dark  
that thrums through this bottle.  
I see the words in your throat.  
You want it. You want to be marked.

You’re done with butterbeer. You’ve marked  
enough time as an innocent. Let the coffee  
burn a hot path down your throat.  
Let it unfurl inside you like Snape’s  
black cape, like a bottle  
of ink poured into your veins, lovely and dark.

Let go of mere kindness. Give dark  
glares to children. Let Gryffindor brats be marked  
down ten thousand points for showing too much bottle.  
Make any smile a sneer. Spit bitter-coffee  
acid like a yob. Feel Snape’s  
brittle anger like a growl in your throat.

Hex. Snarl. Kill. So many will still give throat  
to their Defense of the Dark  
Artist. They’ll paint a softer Snape:  
a pastel man who wants his birthdays marked,  
a goth hipster from a coffee  
shop, or a sad boy who lost his Da to the bottle.

While they've not got the bottle to face the cut-throat  
bastard (even dead), you're ready to take your coffee dark,  
dark as the bitter truth marked “Essence of Severus Snape.”  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Note on language:  
> Of course, a bottle is a container. "bottle" is also British slang that would translate roughly as nerve, courage, or guts.
> 
> "yob" is British slang word for a rough, rowdy, bad mannered young man. It's a word associated with bad public behavior.


End file.
